Later that night, Victoire lay wide awake in her bed. She had been watching as the small traces of moonlight that had filed through her window bounced off the walls and reflected upon various sources around the room, though she was sure how long she'd been doing this. She glanced back at her clock and noticed it had been a half an hour since she'd last checked the time. It had only seemed like minutes, but just like that, thirty minutes had passed without warning.
She groaned frustratingly. Why couldn't she get her mind to settle? It was as if a hundred different thoughts were charging through her, all of which were fighting for her sole focus. At this rate, she would never get to sleep, but she simply couldn't shake the feeling in the pit of her gut that was making her worry about Ted. The same two questions continued to pester her—had he gotten home and was he okay? If only there was a way she could tell, then she might finally get some peace, but since she couldn't…
Why did she have to be such a worrier?
She shook her head and forced her eyes shut. He was fine. Why wouldn't he be fine? She needed to go to sleep. The faster she fell asleep, the sooner morning would be here and the sooner she could go and see him. That's all there was to it. She just needed to go to sleep and stop thinking about him.
Her eyes hadn't been shut for thirty second before they were back open again.
This wasn't going to work. Something needed to change. She flipped over onto her stomach and let her gaze scan the rest of her room. Whit had nodded off already, the sound of her tranquil breathing was one of only two noises Victoire could hear—the other being the wind outside as it rattled the tree branches around. Everything else was otherwise silent.
Out of boredom and lack of anything else to do, she started focusing on the objects around her room; studying them intently, as if she'd never seen them before. First was the clown figurine that sat atop her dresser chest. Her grandfather had given it to her when she was four to commemorate her first visit to France, but staring at it now in the dark, she noticed it gave off a particularly creepy vibe. Something about its smile was high unsettling…
She immediately switched her focus to the picture frames that hung on the wall opposite of her bed, but in the dark she could just barely make out the images within the frames. Not that she had to see them, considering she had them all memorized after having looked at them all hundreds of times in the past. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize each one. The first was a photo of her and her parents before she'd left for Hogwarts for her first year. The second was a picture of her and Whit that she had taken earlier in the year at school. The next was of she of her siblings in a café in Paris from over the summer, followed by one of her favorite pictures of her and Ted when they were kids playing out in the garden of her grandparents' house—
She opened her eyes. Well, that hadn't helped one bit in forgetting about Ted.
Right then, it became clear to her then that she was never going to sleep tonight; she was just going to lay here until day break, watching the clock tick down the minutes until morning came. It was all she could do.
She should have said something to her mother after Ted had Apparated away. If she had just explained things to her, she may have understood and let her go over there to make sure, but it was far too late now. Neither of her parents would take kindly to her waking them up at—she checked the clock—2:43 in the morning on a worried hunch that she was most likely overreacting to in the first place.
She sat up in bed and glanced out the window. It was instances like this that made her wish she could speed up the aging process and just grow up already. If it had been her nineteenth birthday, she wouldn't have to be lying here wondering "what if?" She'd be out of school, out on her own, and capable of doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She could stay out all night if she so pleased, and should could definitely go and see her boyfriend whenever she damn well felt like.
On that thought, her eyes shifted from the window to her desk, where she immediately settled on Ted's key lying right where she had left it earlier. With a small smirk, she reached forward and picked it up to examine it with what little moonlight was pouring through the window. She was old enough to have someone trust her with a key to their flat, but she wasn't old enough to use it between certain set hours of the day; all because she had to abide by her parents rules.
Stupid rules…
With a quick turn, she flipped the key over and over again in hand. The longer the watched it, the more that an oddly rebellious thought began to poke at her from the depth of somewhere inside her. It was the kind of thought she wasn't even aware she was capable of having until it struck her just now.
Yet, there it was formulating in her mind—something was telling her to just go and see for herself how Ted was doing at this very minute. She wasn't going to sleep anyway, and her parents were both well asleep by now. Everyone was asleep by now, so they would have no way of knowing if she just so happened to…
No, that was stupid. She couldn't sneak out. What was she thinking? If she got caught…
Her eyes went wide at the very thought of being caught. She didn't even want to imagine the repercussions of what would happen if she were caught sneaking out in the middle of the night to go and see her boyfriend. Her parents would never let her hear the end of that! She could already envision the yelling and the scolding, not to mention that she'd be confined to her room until she moved away for good.
But…then again, that wasn't that far off, now was it? There were only a few more days left of Christmas holiday to punish her for, and then her parents would have to let her go back to school. She'd probably have to spend Easter holidays locked away, but she could always sign up to stay at Hogwarts during those if necessary. After that, she'd be done with school for good and ready to move out on her own anyway. Her parents would barely have any time to dole out any real punishment if—
Wait. Was she really sitting here thinking like this? Was she really trying to convince herself to go against her better judgment and do something stupid like sneak out in the middle of the night? Was she actually attempting to rationalize her punishment to make it seem less terrible if she did so happen to get caught? Where was all of this coming from?
No. She couldn't sneak out. She just couldn't. After all, how would she even do it? Just get up and walk out the front door?
She considered that for a moment.
No, she'd have to use the kitchen door because it made less noise. No one would hear her if she used the kitchen door. If she did that, she'd really only have slip outside and then Apparate and…
Could it really be that easy?
She ran the plan over again in her head, attempting to search for flaw in which something could go wrong. It seemed so doable and easy. It seemed to make so much sense. Was this…?
Before she even knew what she was doing, with Ted's key clutched in her hand, she pulled her blankets off and placed her feet softly onto the ground. The floor creaked slightly, but one glance at Whit told her than it hadn't been enough to disturb her. Granted, Whit was the least of her worries at the moment, but she didn't want to chance anything.
With soft steps across the room towards her closet, Victoire realized she couldn't even get to her closet to change her clothes without somehow knocking into Whit's bed. There was no way around it. It seemed that if she was going to do this, she'd have to make due in her pajamas. Of course, once she remembered how cold it had been earlier, that wasn't exactly a comforting thought.
She grabbed her bathrobe off the back of her bedroom door and pulled it around her before slowly, almost barely, cracking the door open. When it made no noise, she tried to open it a little more, but the hinges didn't bother to creak until after she'd made just enough space for her to sneak though. She glanced back once more to check Whit, though quickly set her sights onto the dark hallway in front of her. She had to make sure everyone had gone to sleep before she could do anything further, and quickly noticed that no lights shinned from underneath anyone's bedroom doors. As she stepped further into the hallway to shut her bedroom door behind her, she glanced over the upstairs railing and down onto the foyer below. No lights shined from any of the adjoining rooms; the kitchen was dark and quiet, as was the living room.
With a deep breath that she held, as if that would somehow make her lighter when descending the stairs, she slowly made her way down towards the kitchen. She purposely skipped the fourth stair from the bottom—knowing that it had a tendency to creak loudly—and once on the ground floor, she glanced back up triumphantly. She made it this far.
With a quick dash towards the front door, she grabbed her cloak and pulled it around her as she made her way through the kitchen, around the dinner table, and over to where the side door was. Before she turned the lock, she quickly checked over her shoulder to make absolutely positive no one was standing there in the dark watching her. When no one was, she pulled the door open and stepped back out into the icy air for the second time that night.
Out on the side porch, she could hear her heart thumping in her ears as she made her way back around the side of the house. She wanted to Apparate as far away as possible from her parents' window for fear of them somehow hearing the tiny pop she would make upon Apparating away. She'd gotten this far already, she wasn't taking any chances.
As she reached the other side of the house, where the spot she and Ted had talked just hours before lay yards away, she double checked to make sure she still had Ted's key. She pocketed it into her cloak before throwing once last look back at her house to make sure no lights had come on. If she did get caught, she knew this was possibly the last few moments of freedom she would have for the next few months; she felt somewhat inclined to savor it. She could only hope that her house was this peaceful when she returned.
She Apparated on the spot, the pulling sensation whipping her aggressively against the cold, though only lasting for a moment. Before she had time to blink, she was already standing in the corridor outside of Ted's flat; his door just yards away. She stared at it for a long moment, realizing that she hadn't quite thought this far ahead yet. She had been so absorbed with sneaking out that what she was supposed to do when she got her had slipped her mind. Should she knock? Just because she had the key, it didn't mean she should just let herself in…did it? She'd hate to fail her very first test as a key holder by just barging in as if she owned the place. Especially at three o'clock in the morning.
Still, Ted told her to let herself in the morning, and he hadn't seemed too concerned with it then. Plus, he was probably—hopefully—asleep. The last she wanted to do was wake him up and force him out of bed when he should be resting.
Right, she thought, pulling the key out of her pocket. She was going to use the key. That's what it was there for. With her pulse racing, she walked over to the door and placed the key in to the keyhole, where it was actually a surprise to her to see it turn and click itself open. She wasn't sure why, but she had almost expected that not to happen.
She gently tapped the door open and found herself facing nothing but darkness in front of her. As she entered and shut the door behind her, she held her breath again for reasons she wasn't even sure of. Without a light, she couldn't make out any of the familiar references Ted had in his flat. She knew the kitchen was to the right, and if she walked in further, she would run the sofa if she wasn't careful. Ted's bedroom would be to the left, though she couldn't tell where the door was from where she was standing.
She drew her wand and whispered, "Lumos" before watching her wand light spill across the floor and illuminate everything in its path. Now she could make out everything in detail, though she stopped when a sudden thought occurred to her.
Here she was unannounced and fumbling around in the dark at three o'clock in the morning. If Ted was here, what was stopping him from thinking she was a prowler and hexing her on the spot?
Immediately, she shined her wand light onto the kitchen and walked over to where she knew she would find a light. With a quick click, the room grew bright and Victoire extinguished her wand's beam. It was then that she noticed Ted's bedroom door was open and that the light from the kitchen was now casting itself inside of it. If she just took a few steps forward, she'd be able to peer inside and have all the answers she'd been asking herself for the better part of the last few hours…
She took a deep breath and walked forward, peering slowly into his room.
Sure enough, lying shirtless on the bed with the sheet wrapped half around him in a confining sort of way, Ted lay asleep on his stomach. He'd made it home okay, and given the sound of his heavy breathing, he seemed to be fine. She smiled as she watched him, though she couldn't help but feel rather stupid having worried so much. Of course he was fine. Why wouldn't he be fine?
In that moment, Ted's hair flashed from brown, to blue, to a turquoise-ish color, which distracted her from her thoughts. She hadn't seen it do that since they were kids and she'd stumbled upon him napping a time or two. All she knew was that it had something to do with his dreams, but it had always fascinated her to watch it change so quickly and without warning.
She looked away and took a step back, already knowing that she should probably go. If he was asleep, she didn't want to wake him. He needed his rest and he looked comfortable. She'd gotten her answer and could now finally get some sleep of her own. If she left now, she'd have barely been gone.
Ted's hair flashed to blue again as he turned in his sleep onto his back. In the process, his left arm hung itself dully over the edge of the bed; his injury from earlier now completely visible. Seeing it so clearly made Victoire glance away from the bed and down to the floor, where a pile of robes sat as if they'd been hastily discarded. It only took a second for her eyes to adjust well enough to notice the bloody sleeve.
Something inside of her knew she should let him sleep—she did know that. But she couldn't help think that she should say something. It seemed rather strange to just sneak in and sneak out with no word. After all, what would Ted say if she told him she had stopped by to check on him, but not bothered to actually wake him?
As soon as she had asked herself the question, the sound of Ted's voice in her head—clear as day—answered, "Why didn't you just wake me?"
She stared at him a moment longer, but with a resigned sigh, she took a quick step forward towards his bed and reached out to gently shake his shoulder.
"Ted," she whispered.
He stirred for a brief second before suddenly turning over with a start, as if quickly realizing that someone was speaking to him when there shouldn't have been anyone there.
"Hey, it's me," she said immediately. "Victoire." She took out her wand and cast a lighting spell, knowing right away that the unexpected bright light on her face would probably startle him more that he already was. She wanted to prove it was her, though—in case he still wasn't sure. There was always a chance he had his wand nearby and the last thing she needed was to get hexed on accident.
On his back, Ted squinted away from the light before he sluggishly pulled himself onto his elbows. "Vic?"
She forced an awkward smile. "Hi."
He pulled himself further into a sitting position, causing the blanket he had had pulled around him to fall lazily to his lap. "Hi. What time is it?"
"Sometime after three, I think." She used her wand light to search the room for a clock to double check. When she found one, the time read 3:02.
"Oh, is that all?"
She pointed her wand light back at herself. "I know this is really weird, me just turning up like this, but after seeing you earlier, I was just…worried. I wanted to make sure you got home okay."
He started to rub his eyes, but laughed a little. "That's sweet."
"I just let myself in with the key," she said, pointing behind her towards the living room. "I wasn't going to wake you, but I sort of thought it would strange if I came in and didn't say anything."
Ted lowered his hand from his face looked up at her with the same tired eyes as earlier in the evening, though there was something behind them now that hadn't been there hours before. He looked much more coherent now, like the Ted she was used to seeing. "I'm glad you did."
"Yeah," she nodded, feeling strangely stupid in this entire situation. "I figured you would have wanted me to." She looked away, wanting to change the subject to something other than her randomly showing up in the middle of the night like a weirdo. "How are you feeling?"
He shrugged a little. "A lot better than earlier. My hand still hurts a little," he picked his hand up and squinted at it in the dark, "but that's about it."
"You look better," she said as she studied his face. He was certainly less pale now, and while he still looked tired, he didn't look like death. He just looked groggy—like someone had woken him up in the middle of the night.
"Did I look that bad?" he asked.
"Let's just say you looked bad enough for me to feel the need to come visit you in the middle of the night."
Ted yawned and vigorously began to rub his face. "Yeah, how'd you pull that off? Getting out of the house, I mean."
"I snuck out."
He stopped rubbing his face and lowered his hands. "Really?"
"How else could I?"
"I don't know." He laughed and pulled himself up further in order to reach out and part the curtains above his bed, letting the moonlight filter in and add some extra light to the room. "Maybe you told your parents I was in bad shape and they let you come and check on me. I would have believed that before I would have believed you snuck out."
She shrugged and smiled a little.
"You can put out the light," he said, pointing to her wand. "It's killing my eyes."
"Oops." She extinguished the light before pocketing her wand in her cloak. "Sorry."
"It's okay," he said, yawning again. "So, your parents don't know you're here?"
She shook her head.
"No one's expecting you back anytime soon?"
"No one knows I'm gone, but if they wake up and see I'm not there…" She made an obvious face.
Ted slowly began to smile. "What I'm getting at is that you don't have to rush back, then? I mean, you're out already."
"Oh," she said, realizing exactly where he was going with this. "No, I mean, I'd have to get back before people start waking up or else this is probably the last you'll see of me until I've graduated, but," she grinned, "I've got some time."
"Well, in that case…" He made an obvious gesture of shifting himself over to create space on the bed. "Why don't you stay awhile?"
She smiled. "Stay awhile, huh?"
"Stay as long as you like," he said before he flipped over to his stomach and pulled a pillow underneath his head. "Stay forever."
She glanced around the room before reaching down to undo her cloak, though she hesitated briefly. "If I stay, you can't let me fall asleep. I'm serious about that."
He hummed. "Got it. Don't fall asleep."
"Because if you think I'm kidding about that whole not seeing me until graduation thing…" She threw her cloak over the back of a nearby chair.
"No, I know you're not," he said as he lazily watched her untie the waist tie of her bathrobe. "How many layers of clothes are you wearing?"
"Have you forgotten how cold it is outside?" she asked, tossing her bathrobe the way of her cloak and over the back of the chair.
"I've forgotten most of the night, to be honest," he mumbled. "That's probably a good thing."
"Hopefully you haven't forgotten what happened to your hand so you can tell me what happened," she said as she sat down on the bed and pulled herself under the covers to keep warm. Only seconds after she'd settled herself, Ted had reached over and pulled her closer, burying his face into the side of her arm.
"You don't want to hear about that," he said, his voice muffled from underneath her.
She adjusted herself so she was lying on her side, now face to face with him on the pillow. "Yes, I do."
Ted made a face, and with one eye open and the other closed, he sighed. "I was out at the Dragon's Breath with Simon and all of them and we were having a good time. I was drunk, and I ran into Durrin—"
"Durrin? Durrin Adams?"
"Yeah."
"How do you know him?"
"I work with him."
"Since when?"
"Since this summer. I've told you this before."
"No, you haven't."
"Yes, I have."
"No," she laughed, "first Elizabeth, now Durrin. You never mention any of these people—"
Ted cocked his eyebrow.
"Okay, never mind. Keep going."
"Anyway," Ted continued as he absently began running his hand up and down her back. "Simon and everyone else went on to the next pub, but I had to finish my pint, so I stayed behind. I'm standing there talking to Durrin and—oh yeah, Stuart Reynolds was there, too."
Victoire's jaw dropped. "Uhhh. Where'd he come from?"
"He and Durrin are mates, I guess," Ted said, reaching up to scratch his nose before returning his hand to her back. "I just thought that was random. Anyway, so I'm talking to them and then these idiots next to me start fighting with some goblins for some stupid reason. Spells start flying everywhere, I get stunned—"
Victoire gaped.
"And the next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital, my hand's all messed up, and I feel like shit. I hear that when I feel, I landed on a pile of glass, hence my hand."
"How'd you get to the hospital if you were stunned?"
"Durrin," he said, his eyes fluttering shut. "He was looking out for me. I owe him one."
"Jeez, Ted…" she whispered.
"And that's it," he said, opening his eyes to look down at his injured hand. "I guess I cut an artery or something." He looked at her and forced a little smile. "I could have died."
She pushed him away. "That's not funny."
"It's true," he said with a laugh. "I mean, it would have taken about ten hours or something, but it was possible."
"I'm glad potentially dying is funny to you," Victoire said, making a face before she rolled away from him and onto her back. "You know if something actually terrible would have happened to you, and one of the last things I'd ever said was that I didn't want to see you, I would have never gotten over that."
Ted was silent for a long moment. Victoire actually started to believe that he may have fallen asleep until he finally asked, "Did you mean that?"
"Mean what?"
"That you didn't want to see me today?"
She turned and looked at him.
"Because I seriously drove myself mad all day trying to figure out whether I should come over or whether I should give you space. I even went and talked to Harry about it, and I'll be honest, had I not had such a shitty night I probably wouldn't have."
She sighed and turned back onto her side to face him. "Even if I wanted to believe I meant it when I was mad at you, I won't even lie and say I wasn't really happy when you did turn up. I started to realize how stupid everything seemed and..." She stopped. "Don't get me wrong, I was also really annoyed because I thought you were drunk, but when I saw you, I didn't even want to fight anymore. I just wanted to put everything behind us and for things to be like this," she scooted closer to him, "again."
"I much prefer this over that," he said, wrapping both arms around her.
"That makes two of us." She let her forehead rest against his collar bone as she moved in closer.
And there it was. Right here, lying against him as she was, this felt like a perfect fit. It was so happy and warm here that she really could not understand how it was possible that she could ever be mad at him. There was always such a safe and secure feeling about being wrapped up in Ted that his arms felt like they belonged permanently in this curled position around her body.
She let the quiet, peacefulness of the moment soak for several minutes until Ted's breathing began to grow steadier. He sounded as if he was drifting off.
Victoire picked up her head to look up at him. "Are you asleep?"
He shook his head, but kept his eyes shut. "I'm just really comfortable."
"And comfortable will lead to falling asleep in about thirty seconds."
"I'm trying not to," he said in a drowsy tone, his eyes still closed.
"If you fall asleep, I have to leave," she said, still watching his face. "I can't risk falling asleep."
Ted forced his eyes open and blinked a few times. He abruptly pulled his arms back from around her and flipped himself over onto his back, where he pulled himself into a sitting position and let his head now lean against the wall. "I'm awake."
Victoire flipped over onto her back as well and looked up at him from upside down on the pillow. "You know, you can go to sleep. You've had a rough night. Don't let me stop you."
"I feel fine," he said, glancing down at her. "Sleepy, but fine. Plus, I can sleep anytime. Getting you over here is a different story. I think this is the most alone time we've gotten since you got home." He laughed a little. "Finally, more than five minutes."
"Maybe this sneaking out thing should be a new habit," she said, still looking up at him upside down.
He grinned and reached down to absently stroke her hair. "Just don't go getting yourself caught. I'd rather have the five minutes at a time than none at all."
Victoire smiled at that, though she closed her eyes and let the feeling of his fingers running through her hair settle with her. She had only ever allowed a very small number of people do this throughout the course of her life, but Ted was the only one who made it all feel so uncomplicatedly good. If he kept this up, she was going to fall asleep.
"Don't fall asleep," he joked.
She continued to smile before opening her eyes. "I can't help it."
Ted slid back down into a lying position, where he held out his arm and silently gestured for her to come closer. She did just that, sliding into the space between his chest and his arm and letting her head comfortable rest itself right below his shoulder.
"You know what will be nice?" she said.
"Hmm?"
"The day that I can actually just fall asleep right here, right now, and not have to worry about getting in trouble because I shouldn't be here in the first place."
Ted made a noise of agreement before adding, "I think about that a lot."
She let her hand rest on chest and looked up at him. "Yeah?"
He nodded before again let his hand absently stroke at her hair. "It'll just be nice when I can fall asleep and wake up next to you." He suddenly picked up the blankets and looked underneath them. "Hell, this is first time I've even what you pajamas look like." He looked back up at her. "Well, that is, since you gave up wearing the ones with feet built in."
Victoire laughed, though she could distinctly remember exactly what he was talking about. A pair of red and blue striped pajamas from when she had been smaller that did happened to have had the feet built into them. She'd only ever worn them in the winter time, but she had great memories of how warm they had made her feel. They were one of those things that she couldn't see herself ever forgetting; Ted too, it seemed.
"I can't believe you remember those," she said.
"Don't ask me how I do," he said. "But I do. "Don't get me wrong, you were cute in them, but," he laughed, "I'm glad you've put them behind you."
"Oh, don't act like you didn't have some terrible little choices from your past, Victoire said, pulling her head and resting her chin on his chest to look directly at him. "Remember that one summer—you couldn't have been older than six or seven—and you wore that tattered, stupid, black tie around with you? You just wore it over everything."
Ted hummed, sounding as if he did remember.
"I still remember when you got upset because you thought you lost it, but really your grandmother had just taken it to be cleaned since it was so dirty." She laughed a little. "You were obsessed with that thing."
"Only because it belonged to my dad," he said in a distant, sleepy voice. "I was sort of attached to it for awhile there. I still have it somewhere in a drawer at my Grams's house."
Victoire continued to stare at him, surprised that she had never know that about him. "I never knew that."
He shrugged. "Yeah, my Grams found it one day amongst a lot of my mum's old stuff, so I took it started wearing it just to pretend. After awhile it turned into like a security blanket or something. I just kept wearing it." He began stroking her hair again. "This was also during the time I was having these recurring dreams about my parents almost every night, so I think wearing that thing somehow helped make those feel more real." He suddenly made a funny face. "You know, I had more issues as a kid than I let on."
"I never knew you had recurring dreams about your parents either," Victoire said, returning her head to his shoulder.
"For about two years, all the time," he mumbled. "They were always really vivid dreams, too. I could hear their voices—or what I imagined were their voices— and I could see their faces. Only my Grams and Harry ever knew about them because I woke up crying a few times, but they were the only ones I ever told—well, until now." He kissed the top of her head. "Here I am telling you all my secrets."
She looked up at him again, but lacked the ability to not smile at that comment. "I feel like you know most of my secrets. Discretion isn't something I've ever been good at."
He laughed at that. "That's true."
"Well, okay, maybe not," she said, pulling herself up to sit on her knees and face him where he lay. "How about this—I had a crush on you when I was younger."
"Yeah, everyone knew that."
"They did?" she asked, though she had a feeling that he was probably right. She had never been a subtle child.
"I was the densest kid you could have met when it came to girls and," he smiled, "even I knew that."
She twisted her face into mock frustration. "Okay. Well…" She looked away and up towards where the curtains were parted and letting light trickle in. "Give me a second. I'll think of something else."
"It's not a big deal," he said, reaching out to grab the front of her shirt and tug it. "Lay back down."
"Not until I think of something," she said matter-of-factly. She suddenly reached down to pull at the blanket he was using; with one quick tug, she pulled it off of him and wrapped it instead around herself to keep warm.
Ted's watched her, his face now begging the question, 'What that was about?', but he said nothing as he lay there staring up at her— his head cocked lazily to the side and a funny smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"This isn't fair," Victoire said after she'd wrapped herself so tightly with the blanket that her head just barely poking out from the top. "You know all of my secrets."
"So, because of that, you feel it necessary to steal my blanket?"
She laughed and let the blanket fall back down to the bed. "Seems that way, doesn't it?"
Ted rolled his eyes and barely smiled, but there was a playfulness in his expression that caused Victoire to have a surge of willingness suddenly course through her. In that moment, she couldn't help but feel more than normally attracted to him because of the way he was just lying there, half-dressed, and smiling at her as if they were the only two people in the world in on some very special secret. There was something enticingly intimate about everything occurring right then. It was almost as if the sign she'd asked for a hundred times in the past was now staring right back at her through Ted's eyes. She knew what she could do with this moment—what she wanted to do—but she just needed to act on it.
Ted suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the wrists, pulling her down on top him. "You sure do have a lot of energy for three-something in the morning."
"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, her chin now resting on his chest again as she found her face just centimeters away from his.
He smiled very particularly. "I guess that all depends on what we're doing."
"What's all this 'we're' business?" she teased, throwing him a suggestive smile. "I thought you were sleepy?"
He quickly shook his head. "Wide awake."
She continued to smile, feeling rather amused by his reaction and now curious as to how far she could push him. "Yes, but, you've had a really rough night. You should be relaxing." She purposely rose at that moment and twisted over him so that her legs were on either side of his hips.
"This is relaxing," he said, wasting no time in sitting up and pulling her flat onto his lap. If she had had any doubts about going any further with this before, they were all washed away the second she felt his erection pressed up against her leg. Knowing she had caused that only fed her desire to push on.
"Is it?" she asked, leaning in to kiss his lips. She let her fingers slowly run through the back of his hair for a moment before pulling away and taking a calculated route along his jaw line and down to his neck. "What I was hoping we could do isn't exactly relaxing."
"Oh, yeah?" he asked, his body reflexively tensing as she felt his hands grip her hips. "And what's that?"
Victoire stopped kissing his neck to look at him. "You just want me to say it."
He made a breathy noise that sounded halfway between a hum and a laugh. "You're damn right I do."
She smiled and leaned in once more to kiss him, but paused just before their lips met. "How about I just show you?"
She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back with an extra added sense of energy about him. There was something about sitting there on his lap—her mouth on his, her hands still in his hair—that gave Victoire an immense sense of control. She felt completely in control. Kissing was something she'd been doing for years now; something she assumed she was fairly well versed in the mechanics of. She knew when to open her mouth more and when to close it; she knew when to use her tongue a little and when to use it a lot. She was used to the various textures and the interchanging feeling of wet and dry parts of the mouth…These were all things she felt in control of.
It was this control that she felt the need to take advantage of at the moment considering there were only a few more bases to cover until she would have to relent to Ted to take over the situation. Soon enough, she wouldn't have clue what she was doing next.
In part, she knew most of it would be instinctive. You put it in there and work out the details as you went, but as she continued to sit there kissing him, she had to wonder how much of it was instinctual and how much of it was learned. She didn't want to look stupid…
Ted's hands rose from her hips and went under her shirt, where they grazed her abdomen for just a moment before he reached back down and pulled up at the hem of her shirt. She raised her arms in the air so he could tug it over head, but continued to kiss him as he tossed it off somewhere into the darkness. He pulled her down onto the bed with him.
Victoire tried to draw this moment out for as long as possible, interchanging between kissing his mouth, his neck, his shoulders, his chest, then running her hands around his torso and back up through his hair. She had laid back and let him do the same to her for what seemed like several amazing hours, but was probably more like a handful of minutes. It hadn't been until she reached down—almost without realizing she was doing it—to grab at the waistband of his pants that she suddenly sensed the dynamic start to shift. It was at this point that Ted shifted her off him and went to his pants, where with one quick gesture he pulled them down around his ankles and tossed them off into the darkness.
"Those were just going to get in the way," he said with an adorable little smile across his face. It almost seemed out of place considering how sexually charged he'd been just seconds before.
Victoire laughed as she watched him hold up one finger, as if signaling for a minute, before he climbed over her and out of the bed. He looked like he was looking for something on the floor.
She took the moment to admire the view, silently wondering if she could have ever predicted the two of them would have come this far. Ted, the same person who remembered her in footie pajamas over a decade ago, was now the same person she wished would hurry up looking for whatever it was he was searching for in the dark and get back over on top of her.
"What are you looking for?" she whispered.
He didn't answer her, but instead was now searching through his blood stained robes. "There we go." He turned around with his wand now in his hand. "Found it."
"Oh," Victoire said, immediately realizing why he'd gone to fetch that; the entire weight behind what that wand meant hit her instantly. This was really going to happen.
Ted placed the wand on the bedside table and climbed back in beside her. There was a quiet sense of calm about him as he lay on his side, bent his arm at the elbow, and propped his head up on his hand. He smiled as he looked at her. "You look incredible right now."
She felt a little self conscious all of a sudden, but still smiled as she laid there fiddling with the sheet between her fingers. Her mind was so busy focusing on what was about to happen, that she really didn't know what to say.
"Seriously," Ted said, reaching up to push a piece of stray hair out of her face. "Do you know how lucky I am?"
She swallowed and smiled again.
"Because I am," he said, watching her face and glancing between her eyes and the part of her forehead where his hand still rested after moving that stray hair.
"Same," she said, just barely finding her voice. "I feel the same way."
Ted smiled and reached out to run his hand along her stomach. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, but exhaled slowly.
"Just so you know, I'm not expecting anything, so if you don't—"
For some reason, the noble nature of his comment brought a weird sense of calm over her, which in turn made her burst out laughing. Just like that, the laughter felt like a release, as if all of her nerves were escaping her through this very action. The more she laughed the more at ease she felt.
Ted furrowed his brow. "What's so funny?"
She smiled at him and reached out to touch his face. "If you're not expecting anything, then why did you go get your wand off the floor?"
He looked puzzled for a second before an expression that said, "Well, shit…" crossed his face. "I…" He slowly grinned. "All right, you got me, but was just planning ahead just in case. It's not like I'll be upset if we don't—"
She continued to smile at him; if it were possible, she fell in love with all over again in that precise moment. She pulled his face towards hers and kissed him, her nerves swept away into the sea of doubt that was slowly drying up in her mind. One thing was for complete certain—she had only ever been hesitant of the act of sex itself, never Ted. She had never been more certain that Ted was the guy who was supposed to be beside her right now.
She stopped kissing him for a moment and settled her hands on the waist of her own pants. It was the last bit of control she knew she had before entering into unknown territory, and she was going to take advantage of it. Just like Ted had done with his, she pulled her pants down around her ankles and tossed them aside.
A/N: Because in the beginning I said I would mention it, this is one of those chapters that has an an extended version over at my journal. :) Feel free to check it out if you're interested.
Secret- I wanted to name this chapter: Getting A Peace, but I assumed people would just think that I can't spell piece and thus, wouldn't get it. Anyway, thanks for all the reviews! This story broke 300! Woohoo! The next update will actually be the final one. :) Three chapters until the end of the series!